Efforts to support local news nationally are getting a boost from the League of Women Voters.

The national organization voted Saturday to embrace a policy position, drafted in Washington, supporting local journalism because it’s critical to democracy and empowering voters.

That authorizes one of the country’s most trusted grassroots organizations to lobby for legislation to help save local news outlets.

“We’re throwing our support behind the concept that local news is a public good — it’s something people need,” said Dee Anne Finken, a Vancouver, Wash., member who advocated for the position.

By a vote of 859-63 at its convention in Washington, D.C., the league adopted a position stating that “it is the responsibility of the government to provide support for conditions under which credible local journalism can survive and thrive.”

The league’s Washington chapter made this happen, said Mary Coltrane, chapter president.

It produced a comprehensive report in 2022 on how democracy is suffering from the decline of local news. (I was involved as a technical editor of the report and provided feedback to the authors.)

The chapter approved its position statement in 2023 and proposed it to the national organization.

“This was a huge thing,” Finken, a co-author of the report, said after the convention. “We’ve had so many states come up and say ‘thank you,’ they were feeling this in their own communities, from Florida to Maine to Colorado to California, this is hitting everybody.”

Finken said league members rely on local reporting.

“They follow what’s happening in the school boards and city councils,” she said. “If you live in a community like Everett and the Everett Herald gets slashed, they can’t follow what’s going on and they can’t advocate for good governance.”

The position statement clears the way for local chapters to advocate as they see fit to preserve local news.

“They are designed to stand the test of time, so no matter how the media landscape changes over the next 25, 50 years, those positions are likely to be sufficient for us to take necessary actions,” Coltrane said.

In Washington, league members in 2023 supported legislation to exempt news publishers from a state business tax, saving them an estimated $10 million over 10 years.

Other chapters, and the national organization, could opt to lobby for an array of proposals to support local news outlets.

That ranges from local decisions to continue publishing legal notices in newspapers to federal proposals for tax credits and antitrust reforms.

“It empowers us at the local level across the country,” Finken said.

A revolutionary scoop: The Declaration of Independence was published July 6, 1776, in The Pennsylvania Evening Post, a Saturday edition of the newspaper available “for only two coppers.”

It was the first of many newspapers to publish the revolutionary document after its July 4 adoption.

The Evening Post had earlier reported, on July 2, 1776, that the Continental Congress was declaring the colonies’ independence.

Let’s also celebrate on future July 2nds, when Americans were first informed by the press of their nation’s impending birth.

California progress: Perhaps the League of Women Voters can help in California.

Two major bills to help save local journalism in the Golden State advanced last week but still need overall legislative passage and the governor’s signature.

Both impose the equivalent of impact fees on dominant tech companies to address harm they caused to local news outlets and support newsroom jobs.

“What’s happened thus far is we’ve proven we’re serious and we have a lot of support in both houses so the threat, if you look at it from the platforms’ point of view, it’s more real than ever,” state Sen. Steve Glazer told me in an interview.

The California Journalism Preservation Act, a proposed news-usage fee for tech gatekeepers, cleared the state Senate Judiciary Committee with a 9-2 vote on June 25. It’s now before the Appropriations Committee.

The full Senate passed the other bill, Glazer’s SB 1327, a data extraction transaction tax on giant platforms. It would raise $500 million yearly for local newsrooms. It passed 27-7 on June 27 and is before the state Assembly.

Google, Meta and Amazon are currently the only companies that would be subject to the tax, because they make more than $2.5 billion yearly in California selling user information or access to users to advertisers.

Glazer said the June 27 vote “gave us enormous momentum and enthusiasm” and was bipartisan.

The legislature adjourns Aug. 31, so supporters have just under two months to pass one or the other or a combination.

So far the tech platforms have “never come to the table with any kind of serious” proposal to address the harm they caused to local journalism, Glazer said.

“Google’s answer is, you should be happy with our charity, isn’t that enough … That’s how they defend their contributions to hollowing out the newsrooms,” he said.

A Google spokesperson referred me to an executive’s testimony against the usage fee, noting the company has proposed instead more grants, pooled with grants from others.

Glazer said the grants are “simply not enough.”

“We appreciate it,” he said, “but it’s not an answer to the problem they have helped create.”

This is excerpted from the free, weekly Voices for a Free Press newsletter. Sign up to receive it at the Save the Free Press website, st.news/SavetheFreePress. Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley is the editor of the Free Press Initiative, which aims to inform the public about issues facing newspapers, local news coverage, and a free press. You can learn more about the Free Press Initiative, or sign up for a newsletter, at https://company.seattletimes.com/save-the-free-press/.